'There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.' Doris Lessing

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

The Panda Theory, Joseph Anton & an anthology

Gallic Books very kindly sent me a copy of The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier when I said last week on Twitter that I'd had to return it to the library before I had finished. I started reading it last July (I think) and got a third of the way. I look forward to starting it again. I finally finished Joseph Anton, I had a lump in my throat when Salman's second son, Milan, was born, I was surprised at my emotion. I also have huge respect - and sadness - for his ex-wives Clarissa Luard and Elizabeth West. Clarissa sadly died in 1999. I have the Vintage Book of Indian Writing (1997) that he and West edited - in fact, I bought it that year, I see from the date, I always date my books. Interesting now to get the backdrop to the fraughtness round the publication, it was considered risky then for her to have her name on the anthology (it was a secret they were together). It was dipping into this anthology last autumn that I discovered Bapsi Sidhwa's work. And I had no idea Salman was big pals with Bono (I am not a U2 fan).

Edinburgh Book Festival Shop

@velogubbed

Comment Is Free, summer 2011

My contribution to a CIF article on living with chronic illness. The gross misrepresentation of ME by certain medics and health editors, their conflation of neuroimmune illness with 'chronic fatigue', undoubtedly makes having this illness worse. Thankfully, those voices are slowly and surely being drowned out by actual science.

From Glasgow to Saturn, 2011

50 Stories for Pakistan 2010

Reviews I like

'Stylistically The State of Me is an easy, unpretentious read, peppered with acerbic internalisations that every ME sufferer wants to vocalise to every well-meaning person with a suggestion on how to get better. That said, there is no real bitterness to the book, quite the contrary, and the stories of those surrounding the narrator (nostalgically evoking the 1980s) give it many layers.'Mischa Hiller, author of Sabra Zoo and Shake Off'